Watch Google’s ‘Zeitgeist:...

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Watch Google’s ‘Zeitgeist: Year in Review’ Video

Watch Google’s ‘Zeitgeist: Year in Review’ Video

Whether or not you personally enjoy Facebook’s new Timeline design, it certainly makes one thing obvious: nothing tells the story of who we were at any given moment better than what we were posting about online. Perhaps that’s why we always find Google’s Zeitgeist roundups so fascinating; by examining the most searched names of the year, we get a handy snapshot of what dominated the cultural conversation — at least on the Internet. Yet as with Timeline, the results can be both a bit confusing and embarrassing. Take for example, this year’s most frantically searched topic, Rebecca Black of “Friday” fame, with the strange bedfellows of Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, and Battlefield 3 filling out the top five. Hopefully we haven’t scared you off yet. Click through to see the most Googled people, places, and things of 2011 distilled into a handy clip, and if you’re interested really getting your hands dirty digging through the various top 10 lists, head over to the official Zeitgeist site.